


someone as lost as you

by mapped



Category: Black Sails
Genre: 3x03, Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Episode Related, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Missing Scene, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 17:52:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,205
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7371706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mapped/pseuds/mapped
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the Doldrums, after Flint shoots two of the crew, Silver walks into his cabin to find him sitting on the floor.</p>
            </blockquote>





	someone as lost as you

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xJuniperx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xJuniperx/gifts).



> Written for [this prompt](http://twobrokenwyngs.tumblr.com/post/146612292506/some-silverflint-things-that-i-need-pt-1):
> 
> _During ep 3x03, when Flint is having his teary breakdown in his cabin, what if Silver had walked in? I have to know what would happen. I have to have this._
> 
> Title from the poem ['Scrapbook' by Kim Addonizio](http://poems.com/poem.php?date=16966).

He could still smell the smoke of the pistol in the air, the scent of that warm, crew-killing spark.

Billy had wanted him to try and stop Flint, but he’d done nothing. He’d done nothing because he’d known that Flint was simply doing what had to be done, and he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it.

Fint’s words to him were echoing in his ears. _If you’re not strong enough to do what needs to be done, then I’ll do it for you._

He was not strong enough. And there was Flint playing the role of villain again, that role that tormented him so, for _Silver’s_ sake. There was no mistaking it. Flint had said so outright. 

Silver had never felt weaker nor desired strength more. In the months since he’d lost his leg he had often cursed his wound and wished himself strong and whole again. He had associated his loss of competency with the loss of that part of his body: he was weak, weak when he had drifted in and out of sleep on the windowsill in Flint’s cabin on the Spanish warship for weeks, weak when he stayed on the Walrus during a raid or the taking of a prize, weak when he hauled himself around the ship by the rigging, weak when Muldoon was trapped and drowned and he could only hold Muldoon’s cold hand and scream.

But the physical was not the only kind of weakness he experienced. He was also weak whenever he tried to enter into any kind of discussion with Flint. Utterly powerless. Flint was some sort of god and Silver was but a mere heathen who had of late found himself at risk of being converted by His divine compulsion.

It was hard not to believe in a deity when the signs were manifest and everywhere, when He appeared to you in your every thought.

_I’m clear-headed, Billy. I see him._

Right now, Silver wanted nothing more than to be strong enough, to be strong _enough_ , so he could carry his own burden and lessen Flint’s, and this was a weakness like nothing he had ever known.

And he was already weak as _fuck_. He only had one leg and a half and he was in danger of losing more due to his wilful neglect of what he did have left, he couldn’t take a fucking step without wincing, he couldn’t remember when he last had a sip of water, and even respiring was difficult in his state, each breath rattling his body.

But somehow this was what made him feel weakest. This. The fact that he had compounded Flint’s torture by letting him be the one to shoot those two men. He almost felt like laughing. Flint was the greatest villain in the New World—what did another two bodies to add to the count matter?

The men were all still standing around. Silver was not sure how much time had passed while he was lost in his own head, but he could still smell the damned pistol smoke.

He made a quick, half-hearted speech to reinforce the message that Flint had intended with his executions. He wasn’t even sure if any of the crew took in his words; they all looked on the verge of death already, their stares blank, their faces hollow.

Then he put his hand on Billy’s arm and said, “Please wrap the bodies up, I need to go talk to our Captain.”

Billy gripped his shoulder as he was about to go. “You didn’t say anything to him before, so what have you got to say to him now?” he asked.

Silver didn’t actually know, but he wasn’t about to leave Flint alone after that. He would figure out what he had to say when he was in front of Flint. He shrugged Billy off.

When he reached Flint’s cabin, he opened the door and walked in without knocking as usual. At first glance the cabin appeared empty, but then he heard Flint’s voice, rough like grit: “What the _fuck_ are you doing here?”

Flint was sitting behind the cannon by the bookshelf, arms around his knees, staring up at him. He looked absolutely miserable—much more so than usual. Silver suspected if he wasn’t so dehydrated, there would be tears visible on his face.

Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck _fuck_.

Silver couldn’t help but think of the last time he’d walked into this cabin to find his Captain on the floor. Flint had just murdered his quartermaster then. He looked ready to do the same now, chapped lip quivering as he eyed the pistol that was on his desk, and he _had_ just killed two men out there.

Why couldn’t Flint have bolted the fucking door before descending upon an emotional collapse?

Never mind. Silver hadn’t fled the last time and he wouldn’t flee now.

He sat down opposite Flint near the desk, steadying himself by holding onto it as he did so. Still he landed on the floor with a graceless thud and every bone in his body ached in response.

“Believe it or not, that wasn’t an invitation for you to stay,” Flint said flatly. He didn’t reach for the pistol—which wouldn’t have been loaded anyway. But he could still kill with his bare hands, as Silver well knew. Maybe not in this state, though. Silver hoped. Although that would probably be underestimating Flint. But Flint didn’t lunge. Yet. 

He merely sat there, waiting for Silver to say or do whatever he was going to say or do.

His initial panic dissipating, Silver now felt something else: the well of grief within him, gushing to mirror Flint’s, as if it had only been waiting to see an image of itself as permission for its existence. Since the Walrus emerged from the storm, Silver had barely allowed himself to think of Muldoon, with whom he had grown close over the past months, more so than with any other member of the crew.

And that was what Flint was doing: grieving. Except on top of that he also had all this business about being the villain to plague himself with, which Silver did not, because Flint, it was apparent, would be the villain for him if Silver could not assume the part himself.

Silver tamped down his own grief. Flint’s was far more overwhelming and concerning and had a much more significant impact on the rest of them, and he could not let his own emotions get in the way of dealing with that.

“I’m sorry,” he started, but then felt perplexed as to how he ought to continue. He was sorry—for Flint’s loss. Grief was not something he could ever remember truly feeling until Muldoon. He had never become attached to anyone enough or stayed in one place long enough for grief to be a possible experience. But now he knew it, even if he only knew it in some small measure compared to Flint, who must have known Mrs Barlow for a very long time from what Silver had gathered.

“I’m sorry I’m not strong enough,” was what he ended up saying.

“What?” Flint said, squinting at him.

“I told you once that it must be awful being you,” Silver explained, barely knowing what he was going to say until he said it. “It was an honest observation: you should know that I have no wish for it to be so, but it is so, and I see it has only got worse over time. So I’m sorry that my lack of strength necessitates the growth of your role as the villain. I would prefer it if you did not have to do anything for me. If nobody had to do anything for me.”

 _We’ll take care of you_ , he still hears in Muldoon’s voice. Flint’s assertion is but a variation of that. A much more horrible variation. Silver wanted nothing to have to do with any statement of this sort.

Flint scrubbed a hand up over his face and all the way back over his scalp, down his nape. Silver thought about how prickly that shaved scalp would be under his hand.

“It was not encouragement or incentive for you to become stronger,” Flint said, at length. “I was not asking for you to be more like me, or to share with me this… this role of villain. I will play it by myself as I have done. You are either over-ambitious or foolish or both if you think yourself capable of ever playing such a role now. The men love you and they’ve never liked me.”

Silver snorts. “‘Never liked’ is an understatement,” he said. “But I did not say that I aspired to be the villain with you. Only that I wish none of it had to be this way.”

“Well, on that point I suppose we are in agreement,” Flint said. “I wish we weren’t in the fucking Doldrums. I wish I didn’t have to be in this bloody cabin talking to _you_ , and I wish—” His voice caught in his throat and turned into a strange, sour sound. A… sob.

And then he was crying again without tears, in gulping, arrhythmic breaths that he could not seem to control. He turned his face to the shelf next to him and Silver sat there, watching in horrid fascination, not knowing what to do. He pressed his hands to the wooden floor to propel himself closer to Flint.

Flint’s hands were clutching his knees. Silver leaned forward and put his hand over one of Flint’s.

Flint flinched and moved as if to somehow bury himself into the solid wood of the shelf, but he did not push Silver away. Silver awkwardly soothed his thumb over the back of Flint’s hand in repetitive motions.

Finally Flint’s breaths evened out and slowed, and Silver asked, “What is it you wish?”

“I wish I’d never gone to Charles Town,” Flint murmured, still to the wooden shelf. “And Miranda were alive. And a thousand other things. I have more regrets than you have hairs on your head, John Silver, and I’m not about to tell them all to you.” He twisted back now to face Silver. He looked like a fucking mess with his sunken eyes and pale-pink face, and it felt like someone was squeezing Silver’s heart in their fist. He wondered how he could ever have mistaken Flint for a god.

“I certainly also have more regrets than you have hairs on _your_ head,” Silver attempted to joke. He had to resist the urge to reach out and run his hand over said head.

Flint huffed. It was _almost_ a laugh. Silver counted that a triumph.

“Don’t tell me a regret then,” Silver said. “Tell me something you don’t regret. Just one thing. If you can manage that.” He tried a small smile that hurt his dry lips, to show that he thought that Flint should be able to manage it.

“You’re rather naive for thinking that an easy demand,” Flint said in reply.

“Tell me one thing that was worth it,” Silver insisted.

“A thing that was worth it and a thing that I don’t regret are two different things,” Flint said. “And I don’t believe I have anything from either category to offer you.”

Silver sighed and shook his head. Flint was fucking impenetrable.

“But I can tell you something that was good,” Flint said, slowly. “Everything about her was good. When she played music and read poetry, that was good.” He closed his eyes, as if losing himself in the memories. “She loved dancing, once.”

“Dancing?” Silver said. “And did you?” 

Flint ignored his question and said, “She knew how to pry secrets from me better than anyone did.”

“I wish she were still here to teach me some of her tricks then,” Silver said, half-expecting Flint to throttle him at that.

Flint only said, “Ha.” And then: “I wish I had properly introduced you to her. I should have liked to know what she would have made of you.” His eyes opened again. They were so green, even in the pallid light of the cabin. Silver suddenly became aware that his hand was still on Flint’s.

Flint’s gaze followed his, gliding down too to where their hands touched. There was a moment of silence. Silver thought Flint would shake him off, but Flint did not. Silver felt as though he should probably move away first, but he was glued to this moment, stuck like a fucking barnacle to Flint for some unknown reason.

“Haven’t you got two bodies you need to take care of?” Flint said heavily.

“Yes, I believe I do,” Silver said, and removed his hand at last.

He struggled to an upright stance with the cannon as support, suppressing a cry when his stump had to bear weight again. Flint carried on sitting there on the floor as Silver made to exit.

“I definitely bolted that door, you know,” Flint called out when Silver opened the door. “Don’t know how the fuck you got in here anyway.”

“You must’ve hallucinated it,” Silver said.

“Bolting the door, or you being in here?” Flint asked.

Silver slipped away without answering.

**Author's Note:**

> Please do check out Shiro's (<3) wonderful take on the same prompt if you haven't yet: [Come Talk To Me](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7357687).
> 
> You can find me on [tumblr](http://reluming.tumblr.com/)! Comments are really appreciated. <3


End file.
